North Devon District Council in conjunction with Devon Communities Together and The Environment Agency are hosting a short seminar on Community Flood Resilience & Community Emergency Planning. The event will consist of some short presentations but the focus will be on answering your questions.

Whilst there will be a focus on flooding, community emergency planning can be applied to a range of scenarios including pandemics, severe weather and other emergencies. There are times when a prepared group of volunteers, ‘first on the scene’, can reduce the impact of an event until professional help arrives. Devon Communities Together are able help communities improve on their abilities to respond to future events by helping them to create A Community Emergency Plan. Community Emergency Plans are often devised by a community themselves, very often led by Town and Parish Councils with local volunteers. The plans are held on a database that is used by the responding services to understand who the local contacts are and what resources are available locally during an emergency.

Help in producing these plans is available through Devon Community Resilience Forum, who:

• can provide someone to help your community understand how to plan, prepare and deliver measures to enhance and protect your community, its people, buildings, infrastructure and environment

• can provide free guides, templates, examples and coaching

• have a dedicated fund to support the preparation of a plan and equip local response teams which they will support you to apply for

More information on Devon Community Resilience Forum and Community Emergency Plans is available on Devon Community Resilience Forum’s webpage.

If you’d like to know:

• what actions you can take as an individual to prepare for flooding

• how your community can become more flood resilient

• what work is being carried out in North Devon to reduce flood risk

please join us Thursday 4th March 6pm on ZOOM.

Any questions contact emergencyplanning@northdevon.gov.uk

(For anyone who can’t make 4 March but is interested, get in touch – there’s a similar ZOOM event in Torridge planned for 25 February at 7pm or we can put you in direct touch Devon Community Resilience Forum’s support team).